By Kayla J. Collins

kayla@keepmecurrent.com

Newsweek magazine on Aug. 19 ranked Cape Elizabeth High School the 129th best school in America.

For more than a decade, Newsweek has assessed schools across the country, based on a broad range of data, to determine which ones best prepare students for college. This year, Cape Elizabeth High School was named among 500 others as among “America’s Top High Schools.”

Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia was ranked the No. 1 school in terms of college readiness. A yellow star next to its name on the Newsweek website indicates that the school meets Newsweek’s “equity” measure “by helping low-income students score at or above average on state assessments.”

Newsweek released the 2015 rankings in collaboration with Westat, a research corporation consulting in statistical design, data collection and management, with headquarters in Rockville, Md. In addition to listing the top high schools, which are recognized based solely on their performance, Newsweek also took student poverty rates into account. That list, “Beating the Odds,” is also available on the Newsweek website.

According to the rankings, Cape Elizabeth High School’s graduation rate is 98.4 percent and 95.1 percent of its students are college bound.

Maria Bromberg, a Newsweek business development associate, said Cape Elizabeth also ranked 295th on Newsweek’s “Beating the Odds” list. According to the website, the list seeks to identify schools that excel at preparing students for college while overcoming socioeconomic obstacles.

“Newsweek ranks schools on a variety of college readiness criteria; the most important of which are graduation rate and college enrollment rate,” said Bromberg. “Cape Elizabeth High School’s great performance on our college readiness criteria resulted in their high standing on our lists.”

Cape Elizabeth High School did not make the 2014 list, she said, but in 2013 the school ranked 404th out of 2,000 public schools nationwide, based on its graduation rate, college acceptance rate, average SAT scores, the number of students enrolled in at least one AP course, as well as the number of AP tests taken per student and the average scores.

In 2013, Cape’s graduation rate was 97 percent and 93 percent of its students were headed to college.

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